Renascence
by AnimeDomo
Summary: They always found each other; even after all this time. Link/Zelda AU.


They always found each other; even after all this time.

* * *

The young boy slid the silver key into the rusted lock of the entrance and, with mild difficulty and jimmying, swung the front door wide to the dark and uninhabited dwelling. Books were left in scattered disarray about the floor and tables as though someone had deserted the home in a reckless hurry. A chair was tossed onto it's back and laid, forgotten, among the dust and cobweb architecture of the time lost as though it had been flung in despairing haste. The hovel had a haunted, painfully abandoned look about it. The boy took one hesitant step into the darkness, then another and one more- until he stood in the centre of the chaos. Golden and gilded mementos; masks, swords, hand-carved shields, trinkets of exotic fashion and musical instruments from faraway lands were carefully arranged in a semblance of tribute to past travels on walls and shelves. Looking at it all gave him painful aches, both of heart and mind.

He kept his eyes to the ground as the ache in his skull grew and suddenly sought rest. All these months traveling by foot across unfamiliar, industrialized land and just now was the weariness of his efforts befalling him. He crossed the room with his long booted strides and righted the chair once more at what was once a table used for family meals, wiping the grime from the curve of its wooden seat before letting his knees betray his weight and falling back.

From the corner of his eye he caught a mirror propped along the decaying shelves. The musty surface was trimmed in golden filigree akin to something of ancient royal lore. He gazed upon the creature that watched him from his confines, a being not quite one dimensional in its existence. The shadowed thing watched him unabashedly; his reflection's hair no longer shone the colour of the sun, nor eyes of sky blue.

He could look at it no more, the monster that haunted his childhood, and he adverted his eyes for preservation of his sanity but was too exhausted to stand and turn the reflective surface away from himself.

There was a soft voice at his shoulder. The figure of guidance and benevolence from his early years, once thought imagined; she was mythical in the ethereal light that held her just from mortal view, but he could feel her weight upon his shoulder as she perched. He could feel the tonnage of her words against his skin as she spoke, calling to him.

"Have you begun to remember, hero?"

The title she tacked on to the ending of her words was a little harsher, a jibe- an inside joke he was slowly being let in on. The ache behind his eyes began again. The blue nimbus of his childhood friend hovered closer, awaiting an answer. He placed his head in his palms. He felt as though his mind was about to explode with the constant onslaught of half-memories; dazed dreams of monsters and beasts and his own ancestor's supposed heroic deeds in a land of myth with a Princess of peregrine legend at his side in strife and triumph.

"I have," he conceded in a muddled groan. "But none of it seems to make any sense, Navi."

He heard the small fae sigh as she drifted by in front of him, stirring the air with the scent of the forest. A sudden image of a clearing, green and vibrant with crumbling ruin of an ancient temple among the trees, took hold in his mind. The dream-like picture eased his mind with the warm comfort of a place one could call home. "Can our destiny really depend upon such a dense boy?"

He lifted his head, the ache behind his skull somewhat dissipating at the familiarity of the encounter, and found the blue-haloed girl grinning ruefully at him. His own lips twitched ever so slightly as he fought back a smile. "Have you always been so rude?" He shot back gingerly, his soft voice almost lost among the howling winds of the temperamental winter storm brewing outside.

"Always."

* * *

The most common dreams were that of fire and dark billows of black smoke shrouding her vision and leaving her swaying on her feet as she tried in desperation to escape the ruins of the castle left to burn. She could always hear distant cries of forsaken, the wails of people she knew she was to protect and had failed in entirety. The knowledge that her people had been slain at the hands of her kingdom's enemies, her aid of no help to save them, brought her to her knees. The crackling of flames as it tore apart her home and devoured the walls around her drowned out her own cries of anguish in her failure.

The dreams were altered on some nights; sometimes she dreamt of being a young child, draped in the cloth and gold of a princess, finding her own father murdered at his throne before being whisked away to safety by her nursemaid from the man with the evil eyes. But always she woke with a start and tortured cry, screaming as she felt her skin burn with the heat of flame. Each time she found herself, safe in her own room with her sheets twisted about her ankles as she finally stilled her thrashing. Impa would come rushing in then and tend to her as though she was a small child again by pampering her with warm teas and the medicine for night terrors she had always protested against. The whole ordeal often left her feeling insufferably tragic and spoiled.

Tonight wasn't much different; no longer than she had calmed her panic and drank in her surroundings did Impa come rounding the corner into her room, clad in her night clothes with a fear-stricken expression. "Zelda? Is everything alright?"

Impa sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and placed her hand on the young girl's back. Zelda's breathing was still heavy, her eyes bleary with sleep, and the panic in the lines of her face were plain to see. "Do you want your medicine?" Impa asked quietly. Zelda merely shook her head. Her eyes were far off, her countenance pained with a burden Impa couldn't imagine. "Just- stay here. For a moment."

Impa had been with Zelda all her life; her earliest memories were all of the flaxen-haired nursemaid and her severe eyes and exotic ways. Impa had taught her how to walk in the courtyard of her father's estate on warm spring days. She had been a gentle guide throughout her beginning years of school as she learned to read and write and aced all her multiplication tables. She could even vaguely recall the wizened maid staging a fight with the so-called monster under her bed when, at four, she simply could not sleep at night from fright of the shadows beneath her bed. Impa was the one who held her when she wept and sung her lullaby to ease her heart. "This melody has been passed down through your family for ages. Did you know that you're from a long and noble line of Princesses?" She would tell her with a kindly smile. Impa had understood when she had come to her, tears in her blue eyes, and asked what was wrong with her as she admitted her tale of breaking the front gate and leaving it in twisted metal ruin with merely a thought in a bought of fury. She felt safe with none other than the exotic nursemaid that had raised her in her father's absence.

Even now, at nearly sixteen years of age, Impa held her to her side in the grey shadow of morning and hummed the familiar tune of her lullaby, softly for only Zelda to hear. Long after the tune had ended they simply sat and watched the room fade to the golden hue of sunrise, finding comfort in the quiet.

"It is nearly time for school." Impa eventually pointed out, her words heavy. Zelda looked up from her daze at the clock on her bedside table and found her to be right. How quickly time passes when the mind is absent. "Are you feeling well enough to go?"

Zelda kicked away her patterned blankets from where she had gathered them about her waist for comfort and nodded. "Of course. After all, it was just a nightmare." Zelda offered a sweet smile to counter her nursemaid's anxious mien and waited patiently until Impa took her leave to prepare breakfast. The blonde girl slowly slid to the edge of her mattress and set her feet upon the cool wood of the floor with the same feeble reluctance of her childhood.

She had never admitted it to anyone, but she was still afraid of the monsters under her bed.


End file.
